I haven’t gotten useful advice from Goodluck Jonathan – Buhari

Firstclass newsline gathered that president-elect Buhari has accused
the outgoing Goodluck Jonathan government of not giving him "advice "
on how to go about his administration on May 29.
Buhari spoke on Thursday when a committee from the Centre for Human
Security of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, presented a
five-point policy document to him at the Buhari Support Organisation
office in Abuja.
Hours before the event which held behind closed doors, the All
Progressives Congress, insisted that the Federal Government was not
cooperating with the transition committee set up by the
President-elect.
"Buhari regretted that the outgoing government that is supposed to
give him tips on how to take off has done nothing so far," Garba
Shehu, the Director of Media and Publicity of the All Progressives
Congress Presidential Campaign Organisation, told journalists after
the presentation by the committee.
Shehu added that the President-elect "thanked the Obasanjo initiative
for the gesture, assuring the committee that his incoming
administration will be needing advice as time goes on."
Areas covered by committee in the document include the economy,
security, power, education and infrastructure.
He said that Obasanjo had set up a think tank to carry out a study on
the challenges facing the country in the five key areas.
The study, he added, was started four months ago "so that the outcome
will be made available to the incoming administration after the
election."
He also revealed that Nigeria's former High Commissioner to the United
Kingdom, Dr. Christopher Kolade, who headed the power committee, gave
various stages of the proposed power sector development plan to
include short-term, medium-term, long-term solutions.
Under the short-term solution, the plan seeks to raise the country's
power generation to 10,000 MW within a very short period of time.
He added that the president-elect described the intervention of
Obasanjo and his team as a great impetus for the incoming government.
The vice-chairman of the committee, who is a former Minister of
Finance, Kalu Idika Kalu, said, "We have looked at education,
security, economy, power and Infrastructure. Those are the areas we
have made recommendations and which we hope the new administration
would be able to work on."
He further explained that the president-elect was very happy that they
had been thinking about how to help him hit the ground running.
The Chairman of the centre's governing board, Akin Mabogunje.
who also spoke to journalists after the event, said the committee had
been working on a number of critical issues for the development of the
country.
According to him, a delegation of the committee members involved in
the preparation of the policy document was sent to present the report
to the President-elect.
Earlier on Thursday , the APC described as untrue, a statement
credited to the spokesman for the Peoples Democratic Party, Oliseh
Metuh, that the Jonathan administration was cooperating with the
transition committee constituted by the President-elect.
It also described Metuh in a statement signed by its National
Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, as a man with "an incurable disdain
for truth."
The PDP spokesman had in the said statement accused the APC of
raising a false alarm over happenings within the Jonathan and the
Buhari transition committees.
However, Mohammed insisted that the uncooperative attitude of the
Jonathan team had continued despite its public posturing.
The APC statement Read, "We say with all sense of responsibility
that as of today, May 14, 2015, just about two weeks to the May 29
handover date, no shred of information as to the status of governance
from any ministry, department or agency of government has been given
to our transition committee."
"If that qualifies, in Metuh's lexicon, as cooperation, then there is
a problem somewhere. We dare Metuh or anyone for that matter, to
controvert the fact that not a line of handover note has been handed
over to our transition committee."
The APC also restated its earlier call to Metuh to urgently undertake
a course on how to be an opposition party spokesman so that he would
not talk or write himself into avoidable troubles in the days ahead.
It equally admonished him to always verify information available to
him in order to separate rumours from facts.
The statement further read, "Metuh decided to put his foot in his
mouth when he latched on to the statement made by our Transition
Committee Chairman, forgetting that in making his statement, the
chairman was only advising him against anything that would put the
Federal Government in a bad light.
"A discerning party spokesman, rather than a rabble-rousing one, would
have understood the elder statesman's stand for what it is instead of
using it as a peg to issue a needless, hollow statement that puts his
party and government in a bad light."
The APC said it had decided to allow bygones be bygones, but now that
Metuh had stirred the hornet's nest, it was time to put out the facts
for Nigerians to judge.
It added, "What happened was that, following the request by our
transition committee to meet with them, they invited us to what was
the first formal meeting between both transition committees.
"But the meeting was a mere photo-op, as it yielded nothing concrete
as far as handover notes are concerned.
"In fact, what we met at the so-called meeting was far worse than what
we had thought. Whereas we had hoped to get their handover notes on
May 14th (the date they had indicated to us informally), they told us
point blank that the notes won't be ready until May 24th.
"Because this date falls on a Sunday that means we won't be getting
the handover notes until May 25th, just four days before the May 29th
handover date.
"How do they honestly expect us to peruse thousands of pages of
handover notes, ask pertinent questions and seek necessary
clarifications within four days? Because we want a smooth transition,
we asked if we could meet with some of the ministers pending the
release of the handover notes, but they said no.
"When one of their members even suggested that the whole process be
fast-tracked, they did not budge.
"Despite this setback, we decided not to put the whole issue in the
public domain, until the babbling Metuh decided to look for trouble,
describing the deliberate stonewalling by the Jonathan Administration
as cooperation."
Firstclassnewsline.net